Wikimedia Foundation

For information about the Wikimedia Foundation's involvement with the English Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
AbbreviationWMF
FoundedJune 20, 2003; 21 years ago (2003-06-20), St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.
FounderJimmy Wales
Type501(c)(3), charitable organization
EIN 200049703
FocusFree, open-content, multilingual, wiki-based Internet projects
Location
Area served
Worldwide
ProductsWikipedia, MediaWiki, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikifunctions, Wikimedia Commons, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary
Membership
Board-only
CEO
Maryana Iskander
Revenue
  • $180.2 million (2023)
  • $154.7 million (2022)
Expenses
  • $169.0 million (2023)
  • $146.0 million (2022)
Endowment> $100 million (2021)
Employees
Around 700 staff/contractors (as of November 2022)
Website
ASNs14907, 11820 Edit this at Wikidata
[1][2][3][4]

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., abbreviated WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation.[5] It is the host of Wikipedia, the seventh most visited website in the world. It also hosts fourteen similar projects and supports the development of MediaWiki, the wiki software that underpins them all.[6][7][8] The Foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales, as a non-profit way to fund his crowdsourced wiki projects.[1] They had previously been hosted by Bomis, Wales's for-profit company.[1]

The Wikimedia Foundation provides the technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki-based content in languages across the world.[9] The Foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the projects themselves.[10] Instead, this is done by volunteer editors, such as the Wikipedians. However, it does collaborate with a network of individual volunteers and affiliated organizations, such as Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups and other partners.

The Foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from Wikipedia readers, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia and its sister projects.[11] These are complemented by grants from philanthropic organizations and tech companies, and starting in 2022, by services income from Wikimedia Enterprise. As of 2023, it has employed over 700 staff and contractors, with net assets of $255 million and a growing endowment which has surpassed $100 million.

  1. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference Announcing Wikimedia Foundation was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Villagomez, Jaime; Ball, Valerie J. (May 11, 2016). Return of organization exempt from income tax 2014: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc (PDF) (Form 990). EIN 200049703. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 14, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2016 – via wikimedia.org.
  3. ^ "File:Wikimedia Foundation FY2021–2022 Audit Report.pdf – Wikimedia Foundation Governance Wiki" (PDF). Foundation.wikimedia.org. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Endo100 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Hanson, Jarice (2016). The Social Media Revolution: An Economic Encyclopedia of Friending, Following, Texting, and Connecting. ABC-CLIO. p. 375. ISBN 978-1-61069-768-2.
  6. ^ Jacobs, Julia (April 8, 2019). "Wikipedia Isn't Officially a Social Network. But the Harassment Can Get Ugly". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 14, 2021. Retrieved August 29, 2021.
  7. ^ Cohen, Noam (March 16, 2021). "Wikipedia Is Finally Asking Big Tech to Pay Up". Wired. Archived from the original on March 17, 2021. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
  8. ^ Culliford, Elizabeth (February 2, 2021). "Exclusive: Wikipedia launches new global rules to combat site abuses". Reuters. Archived from the original on August 3, 2021. Retrieved August 29, 2021.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference wikimedia-mission was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "A victory for free knowledge: Florida judge rules Section 230 bars defamation claim against the Wikimedia Foundation". diff.wikimedia.org. October 5, 2021. the plaintiff argued that the Foundation should be treated like a traditional offline publisher and held responsible as though it were vetting all posts made to the sites it hosts, despite the fact that it does not write or curate any of the content found on the projects
  11. ^ "Fundraising report 2020–2021". Wikimedia Foundation.